Profile: John Nagl

John Nagl was a participant or observer in the following events:

President Obama formally announces his administration’s war strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, explicitly linking the two countries in a shared threat assessment requiring a comprehensive regional approach that commits US police and army trainers to Afghanistan, promises an enlargement of Afghan Security Forces, and a requests a boost in funding for Pakistan. The president specifically announces a deployment of 4,000 US troops to train Afghan Army and Police while calling for an accelerated effort to enlarge these forces to an army of 134,000 and a police force of 82,000. The Interagency Policy Group White Paper on the strategy suggests the build-up of Afghan Security Force numbers is only a first step. “Initially this will require a more rapid build-up of the Afghan Army and police up to 134,000 and 82,000 over the next two years, with additional enlargements as circumstances and resources warrant,” reads the paper. [The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, 3/27/2009; Interagency Policy Group, 3/27/2009 ] The New York Times, reporting a day in advance of the announcement, notes that the new strategy will not explicitly endorse the request from American commanders to increase the Afghan national security forces to 400,000 as it had reported earlier in the week (see March 18, 2009). [New York Times, 3/26/2009] Commenting later on Obama’s strategy, retired Army Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, one of the chief architects of the nation-building counterinsurgency doctrine, will say that Obama’s troop increase and trainer push falls short and is a merely a “down payment” on what needs to be done to secure Afghanistan (see March 31, 2009).

One of the intellectual godfathers of President Barack Obama’s new Afghanistan strategy and an influential authority on counterinsurgency strategy warns that the White House is dangerously shortchanging efforts to create a viable Afghan Army. Retired Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, president of the Center for a New American Security think tank, says he is worried that the Obama administration’s commitment to building local forces to secure the country wasn’t given enough emphasis in the president’s AFPAK strategy announcement speech a few days earlier (see March 27, 2009). Speaking at a seminar sponsored by the Foreign Policy Initiative think tank in Washington, Nagl asserts, “The long-term answer has to be an expanded Afghan National Army, and this is the policy I hoped to hear [at the speech] but did not.” He adds that the Afghan National Army, as the country’s most respected institution, must be expanded to 250,000 troops, which closely resembles a reported Pentagon plan to expand the Afghan National Army to 260,000 troops (see March 18, 2009). Nagl refers to Obama’s troop increase and trainer push as a “down payment” on what’s needed to prevent Taliban re-infiltration of the population and keep extremists from taking over Afghanistan. [Military.com, 4/3/2009]

A new neoconservative think tank, the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI—see Before March 25, 2009) holds a conference entitled “Afghanistan: Planning for Success.” The focus will be, according to the organization’s website, a push to escalate US military efforts in that nation. The featured speaker is Senator John McCain (R-AZ), the 2008 presidential candidate and a close friend of two of FPI’s founders, William Kristol and Robert Kagan. In February, McCain gave a speech at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) arguing for a new military “surge” in Afghanistan. Other speakers include AEI fellow Frederick Kagan, counterinsurgency expert Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, and Representative Jane Harman (D-CA), a foreign policy hawk. [Inter Press Service, 3/25/2009; Foreign Policy Initiative, 3/31/2009] Matt Duss of the Center for American Progress wryly observes: “[G]iven the heavy representation of Iraq war advocates [in the conference], I think a far better title would be ‘Afghanistan: Dealing With The Huge Problems Created By Many Of The People On This Very Stage.’ The broad consensus among national security analysts and aid officials is that the diversion of troops and resources toward Iraq beginning in 2002 was one of the main reasons the Taliban and al-Qaeda were able to to re-establish themselves in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border areas, facilitating the collapse of the country back into insurgent warfare. Having failed to complete the mission in Afghanistan, Bush and the Iraq hawks handed the Obama administration a war that promises to be as difficult and costly as Iraq has been—if not more. It’s deeply absurd that some of the people most responsible for the crisis in Afghanistan would now presume to tell us how to deal with it.” [Think Progress, 3/26/2009]

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